~
words given life's first breath by this comment from
SE Reimer  
"thy tiller has found a storied port"
~~

captain of a city street ferry,
upon the choppy holy waters of
scarlet fevered spotted gum stained
christened concrete streets

daylight guided by the starlight
of quartz sparklers sidewalk embedded,
resurrecting, overwhelming,
the grayness of men's mortared materialism,
these textured bright city lights,
from murk morn steam-pipe risen,
signposts of a city boys life,
navigation tools on his
steerage cruises

'tis only my poor torso
I captain,
my bus driving days retired,
single masted, obedient to the sun's paths plotted
on a personalized AAA TripTik,^
my cargo, my tiring physique,
the refined mettle product of a
sixty five year too short voyage of
deep diving mining defining,
and for surety, water divining

city walking life driving,
debtor-in-possession of a
city infection
of perpetual motion sickness

enabled inability
for standing stilled,
lane weaving,
people receiving and perceiving
as buoyed obstacle objects
to be passed by
in a higher lane
of shaken and stirred
city waterways

muscle's squeak in sonnet speak

Why speed thy errant boots
upon lanes of wandering men,
is there not time enough,
words suffice,
in history's future present
unlived long life,
to recompense
all your recorded stanzas,
mariner's tales and wrote recitations of seafaring voices?

sea nat run.
sea nat go.

dodging tween his fellow citified citizens
and the puzzled and puzzling drowning tourists,
sea nat write his unsecreted visions,
sailing from street to shining street poetry

this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee I am composed

when my decomposing time scheduled arrival
lately comes on time,
bury me in its cemetery of memories,
within the soft earth of a watery grave
that the jackhammers drill bit paddles can uncover,
in rough canvas toss my worn smooth
failed frame overboard,
so I may become but one more
fable
in your fabulous liquefying
cement oceans

~~~

3:53 am
5/18/16
nyc

^
http://pearlsoftravelwisdom.boardingarea.com/2014/01/remember-triptix/

From the alleys and streets, from the door steps and heaths, from the meadows and farmlands,
A mist rises, and forms, from the rivers and rills, valleys and hills, from the fields and fissures
It swirls and turns in the night air, forming and fragmenting, failing and fermenting, till it yields.
A figure, blessed and bare, in the late night air, steps into the moonlight, baleful and brazen in its
Nakedness and knowledge, the pall of the shining moon, drips, Grey and silver from his eyes
Youth drips from his thighs, vigour from his lips and fingertips, crimson is his mouth  and *****.
Lions race across his skin as clouds scud across the moon, feral and wild this child of the moon.
Wild and *****, his face shadowed with growth, excited with his youth and desire. On fire.
Panicked by distaste, his own waste and needs, brewed in a mighty beer of disgust, a sire
Of demons, with packaged might, swooping and rearing, devilish and dervish, spiralled, a pyre.
For the noonday sun, wishing hope on everyone yet giving them night and darkness and doom.
Holds my hand and holds it tightly, grapples with me daily and nightly, even in my own room
Where hope takes hold as quick as fear or death or charity, spilling, humors, ethers, exhume
Nothing but a buried evil that has come to see the light. A paltry being, exhumed, of the night











Whilst over all the night comes creeping
Then I go out a’ stealing,
O’er tombstones and moss, where the dead lie sleeping,
Passing the fungi , sarcophagi, and the smell of weeping
Be it from crypt or hall or farmhouse steading.
collecting the shades of the bodies they’re shedding

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.

Whilst the morn sunlight, over hills comes creeping,
There in the shadows, I’ll be steeling,
Darkening daffodils, turning bluebells black and foxglove steeping
Poison filled and passing the narcissi, and the tears of the leaving.
It may be birth or anniversary or wedding.
I’ll be collecting the souls they are shedding.

Through all the breaths that you will still be breathing
And all those breaths that have passed
And all those breaths still to come you are dreaming
One day you shall take your last.
And that’s where I’ll be stealing








Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.













A ****** of crows blackens the noonday sky,
Called from their nests and eyries
And so many ships have gone by, black masted and steering
Into the wind, Sails tattered and the keel close to shearing
I stand on the nest and watch you weeping
Till the bodies fall into the deepening sea and there lie sleeping
And that’s where I’ll be stealing.

I smiled and laughed
Till the black mast
Fell below the sea
I whimpered and moaned
With those overthrown
Till they lay with me

And I took my place once more at the forefront of man’s destiny.








I crept and waddled and watched and bustled my way to the front of the crew.
I stood behind some and fell behind few; I had come here to see.
I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way to the front, shuffled over and tried to find my pew
I sat with my heart in my mouth, beating doubly in my chest and wondered were the culprit I?

It seemed I had sat in the stalls or in the balcony, way out in front
But it seems I had not sat at all just fell into the orchestras’ well.
But I remembered that I had sat, adjusted my clothes, my underwear, my hat.
As a man should do, are we not gentlemen and so I took tea and sat.








Paying court; To the girl with the blue eyes and the thin lipped smile, the girl that knew.
As most girls do, the thoughts of men, or think that they do. And I so I tried to find her,  
But it seems I had known a Girl with no thought of love, no turtle dove, cuddled
Close, no heavenly host, called to her, but she loved as love must befuddled
Drew her breath deeply but not freely, Took air, perspiring, muddled
Thoughts spinning in her head, amazed, this pale eyed temptress, The girl that knew.
As most girls do, emotions that drift, or think they do. And so found herself alone,
And weeping, a girl that did not know that they could love found that they could.
She murmured words of love and shook sand from her pelt, howled to the moon.
She stood tall on her haunches, praying , baying, to the moon goddess, one of hers.
Baleful eyes pale and moonstruck, seemed star struck with love  a mother with her curs.






Not the focus of her attention, her pale imitation, a pale shape creeps from the crepuscular woods
He slinks into the shadows of the night paying court to this matron, with his smell warmth and lust
She stalls and smells the night air
Little of care, for all stalks the night air
She sidles and smells the night air
Nothing there, In the dark and silent dream that is the night air.
She bridles and hush’s as the night drips onto her
She has cares; for children that whisper in their sleep on the night air.
Bovine, equine, feline and canine and warm fur
A sleep comes upon them all, a pale imitation of life, and a pale shadow creeps into the light.
And smothers the light of day languishing in his power and majesty sending chills unto the living
He waits in the darkness and shadows.














A child mutters unknown words and the time has come to die
Utters words of fortune and Questions your reasons why.

My dear, my love, child, why do you cry?

I shook myself awake
From my bed of dreams
And warmth
I pulled the duvet over
Took to my feet and felt
The chill

And so I stood, took my bow,  and then knew everything, everything about what I was witnessing,
She looked at him and he looked at she, both knew nothing of how its going to be.
I walked downwards, right down the stairs And I saw everything even the killing thing
He slapped her face and she bloodied drew the knife for all of us to see.
A joyous muse, my heart sang,  witnessing the killing, witnessing the killing and I knew everything.
He looked up at her, she down at him, she was so lucky that she had set him free.
I watched with glee for all I could see, to jail the police said as I sat, as I sat listening.

I heard your excuse I hear your plea, please madam judge don’t let that happen to me
She stood in the dock and sat on the chair,  and told everything, the things I’d been witnessing,
Told how she had murdered he, in a fit of rage it was not her fault she should be set free.
Not the judge, not the jury, but I knew everything and shed knowledge of my fury.

I remember the blade, I remember the fury. I now have to thank the jury.
A just verdict, a wrong righted,  a sacred trust bighted.  And just penury.


















These children are mine sayeth the lady
Though the money I earn is a little shady
I look after them through the day
And at night none can say.
Little darlings,
Wont come to no harm, I keep them apart,
Little darlings, are always in my heart.
Sleeping and dreaming and held apart,
They’re just kids and held in my heart.  

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilights last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.



I have heard your thoughts ideas and whims
I have heard your excuses , you hacked off a limb,
Because he was bad, she was a devil, and I have never heard so much drivel.
She was a monster, he was a slave, you never thought of the love that they gave.
I saw you had it hard and it must have been so bad
It was trouble, never ever had you been so sad
She was a *****, with an eternal itch, a witch that was not worth forgiving.
She was a dragon, he was a monster,  it was no longer a life worth living
She pulled me down, he dragged me down into a cesspit of hope.
And off they loped into the night.















'
Publicly he seemed alright, not the ***** that he really was. She was so cool en vogue, en vie,
She pulled the love from this heart like a harvester, reaping all that he could sow, all that she was due.
She meditates on her  betrayal and justifies it to herself and thinks so few, so very soulless few
Would not, and she is more, so very much more and then lifts the knife and delivers his due.
In the early hue of evenings last breath, he drew his and she smiled, just his due.






Sorry tales; I know
Tales no one should know
Tales that diffidently show
The differences, the shocks
All the stops and blocks
That love mocks
In its immortal way
Tarnished and bloodied
It soldiers on, unhurried.









I looked for the heartbroken, the tarnished, the burned; and found them all
For there were so many. Loves that went good and bad; those that hurt  and those that fall
I looked for the unforgiving and hopeless and found them all, some happy in their own way,
The traitors of love I looked also for and found hopeless and alone, shriven but hearty in their own way.
I looked to the martyrs of love, those that have loved deeply and have lost,  for many do







And I was one that did. I knew love as pure as a mountain stream,
Unsullied, clean and precious, but no love is as true as the perfect love
No thing is just as wondrous and perfect as it may  perfectly seem,
Chaste, virginal, and all just yours, lest it be a gift from angels above.

And I loped off into the night
Full of sweat and blood,
Flushed with heaven above
And hell below
Both knew my hollow soul











And through sunlight’s bright blast trampling daemons I came, shamed and hollow
Risen from this earth, cursed to death, in twilights last gleaming, brazen but sullied
The seeds of doom are sown  by such as I  and they were sown deep and fertilised with blood
And reaped by those that know,  reaped by hands that touch, lips that kiss and know,
hunger and want, lust and lie, eyes that darken and hooded, draw lust from liars,
Build from truth funeral pyres,  and fires for the ****** and yet I remain and sullied
Smirk with each passing glance or circumstance at the great and good, the unwashed
The hooded and deep, the shallow and callow, the wanton and unwanted, the sane
And simple, the masterful and master less, musical and malleable, the strange and straight.

These I trampled under heel with little feeling or thought
The form I took was human, the place I came from; dread
I looked and watched and took note, I spoke and listened
Pay’ed heed,  Culpable and crazed, yet my form remained,
this spectre.
Dying now.
Paid heed.

Addicted to the transformation of the self
In hearing we see that touch is the only hearth
To warm one's hands in winter near to the fire
A separation of love shows the underlining
Of dotted red when the word one sees to be false

Mother - when the night was young and you were old
Were you able to see the stars without your glasses?
We are the products of products of products of war
The shells of the bullet casings and bomb fragments
How much transparent blood have we bled so far?
Where is the fork in the road that will take us to Shangri la?

Notice that when the woman in the mirror disappears
The cleaning men drop their tattered, ***** & cut wears
Disaster holds the hands of man's growth & evolution
At times I notice the way the wind passes through my sheets
The skirts of the women and the thin hair of the old men
And they are much like the lavish trees that line my street
That hold true form in the pose of nocturnal naivety

And there we are by the carpenter and the pine tree
An "A" for effort attitude that barely got you the diploma
Hard work for the Hare and easiness for the turtle
The last night I worked was like racing through hurtles
So in sight all ye' fathers who break the mold of religion
Hold true and steady when the wind will start to whip
And knowing was never the correct answer & never helped at all
"The whips are where the heart is," the fortune teller is told

Where all is sold for the cheapest and weakest dollar
I pray to you there has to be more then all this squalor
The nightingale awake in the horned' tree cast in moonlight
Waits for its dreams so in the morning it can have a song to sing
Nod off and nod in where this life began I can't even begin
The guitar plays as she types awaiting for Her lapse of sin
Here the night is wired and wild with burn marks around the edges
Here the boss's hair rings like a hornets nest and everyone clings to their rubble

And pushing forward through the snowflake rings of time
Makes me to think that the seasons are only there for our design
"Not in the least bit asexual," the lawyer reads to his wife
In the morning both their breaths will wreak of red wine
Near do well and saying it all as the bathroom stall
Leaks out a liquid familiar to the ancient, early neanderthals
I have written and I have seen and I have breathed the air of every sea
The only thing I now wish to be
Is on the lakefront with new eyes and a frame to seize
When the speed allows the memorization of misfit tyrants
To push the rant to the edge of the hill that lays in dust and ants
Then there is the horizon that God creates for all those Western window sills

Tearing the skin from your fingernails and seeing not a drip of blood
Sloth like reactions reaching for the best spot in the house
The covers torn away as the nightmare in the mind becomes real
All that can be heard is the vibrating walls and the wailing squeals
Through pebble caked walls and finger padded dawn lit rooms
Lay to rest thy' faith for the moon opens your casket & the entrance to your tomb
Whorish knave that makes even the gutter grimace in its disdain
There the nun contemplates a life she could have lived without restraint

And to connection through the way we need to see each other
The push for brotherly love in the face of the dawn of technological revolution
And the hastiness of the way that it was and in the day of running mad men
What are we to do when the push is far more advantageous then the pull?
Where the cliff is in sight and death is more likely to be the safety net?
Awareness that all of men's problems exist for man to work at it
To prepare themselves for the war of wars where later to see
The deaths of their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their sisters
Was not in vain if the reward of the stars is presented to the young
Where the rivers ripple with Roman like eloquence of progression

To live for another to fight for another to die for a place that would leave you in the gutter
Is the madness that leaves the one's shooting with their heads spinning
Tour the way the rules are made and the books are spun with the hands of spiders
Their webs are infinite and indestructible for they learn from one's before them
Their ways were as intricate and profane in their time
For the envelope was sealed and burned and sworn to forget its own name
The lightness of the this place throws me off in the way the clouds are grey
Letter heads are masted like the wooden ships that produce silver flecks of clay
Our nothingness only pushes us in two directions
Suicide or production
There is a choice that few make with knowing and many without
Which one are you?
Do you cry for reasons for which you cannot see?
Do you believe what you will, or what all the others decree?

Crack of the bed she turns herself over to a man that isn't there
I got a place that I know I belong but to where that is is already long gone
In type the strawberries shine red always appearing to be ruby ripe
And these ghosts of electricity provide neither discomfort or much needed positivity
There were things that I needed to know but never took the time to figure out
So what I'm left with is a world wide open with whatever I want to find is what it is about
The deserts and the canyons, the hills and the oceans all a few of what I wish to see
Where I'll be and where I'll live I don't rightly know now
So I might just get myself a mule and a satchel and get to selling tea

Go in Circles until you can’t anymore then go Straight
You head left Seven times then right Eight
If you see a Gate go back you have gone North for too long
Drive until you run out of gas and then walk until you Drop
When you wake there will be a Star 30’ to the West follow that until even your bones ache
You will at last hit a River with Six Six Masted Boats with Six Crew Men each
Take the Third one and give the Master all that you have
They will then take you into a Fog so deep you do not even know if you are above Water or not
Jump from the Boat when you can Swim in the Air
Swim until you are not sure that it is an Island or a Monster you are going towards
On the shore, there is a Hut and a Path
Take the Path
Leave as much Distance between you and the Hut as possible
Walk for 12 minutes exactly or you will lose your way
Close your eyes and turn until you hear Music then go towards it
You will then walk into a Clearing with a Group of People in it
A Man Playing the Fiddle
A Boy Playing the Drum
A Woman Playing the Flute
A Girl Playing the Tamborine
When the Last One turns to you ask if you may Join
If you have followed my Instructions exactly They will Yes
And when you do Join them in the Clearing something inside you will Settle
And you Will be Free at Last

In the sands now,
The castles crumble,
You are salted, breaded
Of eternity and old song how
Under the mute whine of stars
Sings a lost melody all shall
Soon enough join in corals,
The dive into the stretches
Beyond strands and untoward
What light there surely may come,
Beckon, like recurring dreams
Of fathoms yet to be discovered,
The rivers of time have slipped
You by, here riding now in tides
And driftwood under stars, sails
Moving by masted spars' rowing,
Your rude cross, commemorating,
All that was dearest, too soon lost,
The ferried bones to sea from sky.

a tall masted sailboat plods its way
across the picture window, under power, moving slow, 5 minute mile,
seagulls trail behind, periodically dive bombing the roiled wake, thinking, surely, men’s finding machinery may better than their own,
we,
taking anything to make the new days poems & troubles easier

so it goes, the interplay between man and a natural world,
so it goes, finding fish, our sustenances, a dance perpetual,
so it goes, divining spirits sensing a vision, bring me music,
a spiritual so apropos that who can doubt God’s existence?

”With the water
Sweet water, wash me down
Come on, water
Sweet water, wash me down

Tried my hand at the Bible
Tried my hand at prayer
But now, nothing but the water
Is gonna bring my soul to bear”^

so the birth-day begins, sunrise poems & troubles sure to follow,
in serenity commences, perhaps a sunset bookend to match,
but in between, surely poems & troubles, all of life’s stuffing,
signs and guides, surely, at least, the day’s poem is completed...




—————————————-
^ Nothing But the Water (II)
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

Hail silent ships sailing out to stormy waters
Hail frozen nights and your silent winds
Hail sleep so silent and powerful

Steady dreams born on masted vessels
Dreadful thoughts carried on the winds wings

Hail graves with graces in the light
Hail smoking fires guiding my night
Hail wind blown trees with golden leaves

Your steady hand holds my heart
The stance you form with feet apart

Hail silver wings that slice thin air
Hail crude whispers barely there
Hail you beings that walk this earth

Follow your call from humble berth
Travel sodden roads to find your worth

Oh silent days with much to remember
Oh willful force with rope to sever

Your eyes they watch my every move
With a heart strong to prove

Lets wings of fortune light my path
Lest I stand behind broken mast

I will hold on to this feeling
Even when the waves are reeling
Grip your strength
And find your courage

Hail to brave of heart
I trusted you from the start
Hail to you brave of heart
Play your part

In the sands now,
The castles crumble,
You are salted, breaded
Of eternity and old song how
Under the mute whine of stars
Sings a lost melody all shall
Soon enough join in corals,
The dive into the stretches
Beyond strands and untoward
What light there surely may come,
Beckon, like recurring dreams
Of fathoms yet to be discovered,
The rivers of time have slipped
You by, here riding now in tides
And driftwood under stars, sails
Moving by masted spars' rowing,
Your rude cross, commemorating,
All that was dearest, too soon lost,
The ferried bones to sea from sky.

.

( you may )


||           ||

--
--

Moma told me it would be alright

)(

she wakes up

She looks around

She don't know

What she sees

•

The long hard image of the days to come

•

The terror in each stranger's eye

::::::

The statue rusting in the rain

::

Our memories soon dead and gone

( she )

••••

The 2 masted ship the the harbor

Pirate flags over Monterey

//

The minstrel boy

Singing o'er the waters

Of the San Francisco Bay

)(

Dream !

Young boys and girls

WE ARE FREE

"""
we are free

//


The solitary girl

Declares the new day

//

She is not a stranger


She sits serenely in the sand

The high bird is flying


Await the rebirth of man



.